She awakened late from those poisoned dreams to a riotous blaze of colour and a breath of musky fragrance. On the coffee-stand beside her bed lay a great sheaf of long-stalked roses; deep orange-hearted, with outer petals of ruddy flame. She plunged her face deep into the flowers. The corner of a large square envelope thrust from amongst them. She caught it between her teeth and pulled it out.
It was from von Herrnung, written on paper bearing the device of the Societe Aeronautique Internationale in the Faubourg St. Honore. It was brief enough.
"_That I offended yesterday, Isis will pardon. The address I promised is--'Atelier Wiber, 000, Rue de la Paix.' The good Wiber demands no fee for making Beauty yet more beautiful. All has been arranged._
"_Devotedly,_ "_T. v. H._"
*CHAPTER XVII*
*INTRODUCES AN OLD FRIEND*
Saxham, M.D., F.R.C.S., M.V.O., Consulting Surgeon to St. Stephen's and the Hospital of St. Stanislaus and St. Teresa, sat busily writing at the big leather-topped table in the consulting-room, that, with the well-stocked library adjoining, occupied the rearward ground-floor of the Harley Street corner house.
The hands of the table-clock pointed to eleven A.M. Since nine the doctor had sat at the receipt of patients, the crowd in the waiting-room had melted down to half a dozen souls. Fourteen years had gone by since Saxham, late Temporary Captain, R.A.M.C., attached Headquarters Staff, H.I.M. Forces, Gueldersdorp, had taken over the lease and bought his practice from the fashionable physician who had been ruined by the war slump in South African mining-stocks.
The broken speculator's successor had struck pay-reef from the outset. Society had taken Saxham up and could not afford to drop him again. He was harsh and unconciliatory in manner--a perfect bear, according to Society--but quite too frightfully clever; and as yet no speedier rival had outrun him in the race.
Now as the July sunshine, its fierceness tempered by the short curtains of pale yellow silk that screened the wide-open windows, came streaming in over the fragrant heads of a row of pot-grown rose-trees, ranged on the white-enamelled window-seat, it shone upon a man to whom both Time and Fortune had been kind. The admirable structure of bone, clothed with tough muscle and firm white flesh, had not suffered the degrading changes inseparable from obesity. Nor had the man waxed lean and grisly in proportion as his banking account grew fat. His scholar's stoop bowed the great shoulders even more, disguising the excessive development of the throat and deltoid muscles. The square, pale face, with the short aquiline nose and jutting under-lip, was close-shaven as of old. The thickly growing black hair was streaked with silver-grey and tufted with white upon the temples. His loosely fitting clothes of fine silky black cloth were not the newest cut, neither were they old-fashioned. They were suited perfectly to the man.
While Saxham minutely copied his prescription, the patient who sat facing the window in the chair on the doctor's left hand had not ceased from the enumeration of a lengthy catalogue of symptoms, peculiar to the middle-aged, self-indulgent, and tightly-laced. At the close of a thrilling description of after-dinner palpitations, she became aware that her hearer's attention had strayed. Following up his glance she ran him to earth in one of three tinted photographs that stood in a triptych frame upon his writing-table, and glowed with an indignation that tinged with violet a plump face coated with the latest complexion-cream.
"How very charming your wife is--still!"
The speaker, her recent character of patient now merged in that of visitor, plucked down her veil of violet gauze with a gesture that betrayed her wrath. But her voice was carefully honeyed to match her smile--as she continued:
"You have been married quite an age, haven't you?"
The anniversary of her own second honeymoon was due next week. She went on answering her own query:
"Nearly fourteen years, I think?"
Saxham answered, not glancing at the silver table-almanac but at the threefold photograph frame:
"To be precise, just fourteen years and six weeks. We were married on the 6th of June, 1900."
"You have a good memory--for some things!"
The undisguised resentment in her tone pulled Saxham's head round. He surveyed her with genuine surprise. She bit her lips and tossed her head, waggling her tall feather, jingling her strings of turquoise and amber, coral and onyx, kunzite and olivine, big blocks of which semi-precious stones were being worn just then, strung on the thinnest of gold chains. Each movement evoked a whiff of perfume from the scanty folds of her bizarre attire. Her frankly double chin quivered, and her redundant bosom, already liberally displayed through its transparent covering of embroidered chiffon, threatened to burst its confining bands of baby-ribbon, as the Doctor said:
"Is it not natural that I should have a particularly clear recollection of the greatest day of all my life--save one?"
"You're quite too killing, Owen!"
She laughed tunelessly, clanking her precious pebbles.
"Of course, we all know you're fearfully swanky about your wife's beauty. I saw her yesterday at Lord's--sitting under the awning on the sunny side, with the Duchess of Broads and Lady Castleclare. Your boy was with them, jumping out of his skin over Naumann's bowling for Oxford. Really marvellous! Your poor dear Cambridge hadn't a chance! Tremendously like you he grows--I mean Bawne. Really, your very image!"
"I should prefer," said Saxham, stiffly, "that my son resembled his mother."
"Ha, ha, ha! How quite too romantic!" She threw back her head, its henna-dyed hair plastered closely about it and fastened with buckles of jade, set with knobs of turquoise. A kind of stove-pipe of enamel green velvet crowning her, was trimmed with a band of miniature silk roses in addition to the towering violet plume. The plume, carefully dishevelled so as to convey the impression of a recent wetting, threatened the electric globe-lamp springing from a standard near. Her crossed legs liberally revealed her stockings of white silk openwork, patterned with extra-sized dragon-flies in black chenille, and her laugh rattled about Saxham's vexed ears like Harlequin's painted bladder, full of little pebbles or dried peas. "In love with your wife--and after fourteen years and six weeks!" Her fleshy shoulders shook, and her opulent bosom heaved stormily. She passed a little filmy perfumed handkerchief under her violet gauze veil and delicately dabbed the corners of her eyes. "You remind me of my poor David. I was always the _one woman on earth_, in his opinion. To the last, he was jealous of the slightest reference to you!"
"To _me_? Why should he have been?"
Mildred--for this was Saxham's faithless bride-elect of more than twenty years previously--swallowed her wrath with an effort, and went on with the mulish obstinacy of her type:
"Perhaps it was absurd. But men in love are unreasonable creatures, and David was perfectly mad where I was concerned. He worshipped me to the point of idolatry! He never could _quite_ believe that I did not regret my--my choice--that my heart did not sometimes escape from his keeping in dreams, and become yours again, Owen! He never _really_ cared for Patrine, because she has a look of you.... Absurd, considering that she was born two years after you disappeared into South Africa.... Though of course I could not truthfully say that I did not--think of you a great deal!"
It seemed to the silent man who heard, that Mildred offended against decency. His soul loathed her. She went on:
"Her brother--my darling boy who died--was the very image of David!" Her tone was even womanly and tender in speaking of the dead boy. "But Patrine--a year younger--Patrine is really wonderfully like you, with her commanding figure and almost Egyptian profile, those long eyes under straight eyebrows--and all those masses of dead-black hair!" As Saxham writhed under the category she gave out her irritating laugh again. "Ah!--I forgot! When Patrine was in Paris with Lady Beauvayse for the Big Week--Lady Beau took her to the Atelier Wiber--the famous hairdresser's establishment at 000, Rue de la Paix--where they specialise in _Chevelures des Teintes Moderne_--all the newest effects displayed by stylish mannequins--and really the change is astonishing--her sister Irma and I hardly knew Patrine when she came to see us at Kensington--looking superb, with hair--one might almost call it terra-cotta coloured--showing up her creamy-white skin."
"Do you tell me that Patrine has bleached her splendid hair and stained it with one of those vile dyes that are based on aniline--or Egyptian henna at the best?"
Mildred retorted acidly:
"It was a very expensive process.... Five hundred francs--but I understand that Lady Beauvayse was so good as to insist on paying Wiber's charges herself."